I'm posting to announce a passion-project I'm working on, WoW-2D. WoW-2D is essentially a project with the goal of re-creating the vanilla World of Warcraft experience in 2-D. WoW-2D is nothing more than a passion project and it's something that, over time, I'm very confident I can complete, start to finish. I have no worry as to whether or not there is a market for a 2-D World of Warcraft, quite the opposite. Being this a passion project, I'm hoping that it will be something that people can poke fun at and enjoy at the same time.

I started the project on August 21 of this year and, in my opinion, I have made a nice bit of progress. I am building WoW-2D using Slick2D for the engine and Kryonet for the netcode. I didn't feel the need to build my own engine from the ground up as I've been messing around in Slick2D for quite some time and after thinking about it, Slick will do what I'll need it to, at least for the foreseeable future. I also have a decent amount of experience in general programming, specifically in C# and Java.

In terms of the project, I am currently the sole developer and artist and would love to work with a small team, if anyone is interested/has experience. Personally, I'd prefer artists more than anything as my pixel art skills are absolutely horrid. Unfortunately, as of right now, I am unable to pay anyone for their work but if anyone might share the fun-loving passion for WoW that I do, I think it could be a fun adventure!

If anyone is interested in working with me on this or would just like to follow the progress, please reply to this post and/or follow the link above to the blog.

P.S: I know I don't have a good track record for completing projects on here, but I am fully committed to WoW-2D and am excited both for it's current progress and future development!

Please keep in mind that you might run into legal trouble with Blizzard if you plan to create a 2D copy of WoW! Especially if you claim you have all rights reserved and are using an icon which is clearly related to WoW.

This is also a quite ambitious project. I often struggle when people say that they are trying to create an MMORGP all by themself. Because MMORPG doesn't mean some players but thousands of players playing simultaneously (I don't think kryonet is the right choice here tbh). Alone considering the infrastructure costs for hosting a MMORPG would be a major investment for a single person. You should think about hosting one server with 50 ppl at first.

WoW netcode and MMORPG netcodes in general are a often a piece of pure sophistication. You probably will have to consider things you did not even think about yet. A clean server / client architecutre is essential and you should mostly have no doubts about what you are doing. I just can recommened to keep the scale of your game as low as possible because even a low scale is often too much already. I really hope that you can finish your project and more importantly will have a great learning experience.

I am aware I could run into legal trouble, but this is a gray area on which I will read more about.

In terms of the ambition, WoW is currently and will most likely remain the only MMORPG I play (not current WoW of course, lol no thank you). My goal is not to amass thousands of players but rather I plan to open-source the project when it is complete. I am keeping the game or copy, if you will, on the lowest scale I possibly can with each 'milestone' I surpass. I've done semi-extensive research on Kryonet and it will fit my current needs as I know for a fact that this project wouldn't gain that sort of following anyway. Not that I'm aiming low, but again, this is not my goal in any form. The point of WoW-2D is simply passion and nothing more and nothing less.

In terms of the netcode sophistication, I understand what you mean. I have a lot of optimizations to do and will continue to make them as I move along. This isn't something I'm going to rush by any means. Also, it's true that there are many things I have not considered yet which I'm positive there are but that all comes in time with research and dedication. Now sure, at some point, I would like to host a small server or perhaps even program a dummy client and have 50+ bots connect simultaneously to test any breakage. But, by no means is this project supposed to be taken as something I'm presenting onto a global scale, that'd be ridiculous.

I appreciate your thoughts and concerns, deeply. I do plan to finish this as time is no object to me for this. Thank you

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